1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electrical connector and more particularly, to a modular connector for coupling a number of modular plugs to a printed circuit board.
2. Description of the Related Art
RJ modular connectors have been widely used to transmit voice and data in the telephone industry and in telecommunication system since they were firstly created. A so-called RJ45 modular connector has been widely used in the network system. Under some circumstances, the modular connector is directly mounted on a printed circuit board to couple with one or a plurality of mating plugs. A known type of modular connector is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,456,619 issued to Belopolsky on Oct. 10, 1995. The Belopolsky modular connector includes an insulative housing and an elongated insert inserted into the housing. The insert is L-shaped and includes an upright base portion and an upper portion. A plurality of linear grooves are defined in the upper portion for receiving a plurality of conductive wires. Each wire includes a vertical lead fixed in the base portion, a lateral section extending horizontally in the grooves and a downwardly and rearwardly contacting section being bent from the lateral section for electrically connecting with a contact terminal of the mating modular plug. An ultrasonically welded crossband is provided at the upper portion perpendicularly to the linear grooves and lies over parts of grooves for retaining the wires in position.
However, the crossband only effectively prevents the wires from movement upwardly and downwardly. In fact, the linear lateral sections of the wires are inclined to slide forwardly and rearwardly within corresponding linear grooves. Therefore, the wires cannot be steadily fixed in position in the housing so as to fail to be steadily engaged with the contact terminals of the mating plug. In addition, it should be recognized that adding the ultrasonically welded crossband to retain the wires in position inherently increases production cost.
Hence, an improved modular connector is required to overcome the disadvantages of the prior art.